The Witness Tree.

Sidney Allinson is a Victoria-based communications consultant, Canadian
news correspondent for Britain’s The Army Quarterly and Defence, and
author of The Bantams: The Untold Story of World War I.

This inherently well-researched book likely could have made a fascinating historical study; instead, it was written as a fictional novel. Based on many actual events that took place before and during the Second World War, the story is part family saga, part political intrigue. Its co-authors, Brendan Howley, a Canadian novelist; and John Loftus, an American specialist in intelligence matters, present much inside information about real-life espionage and political double-dealing, spiced with reckless sexual liaisons.

The Witness Tree focuses mainly on some members of a patrician American family—Allen, John Foster, and Eleanor Dulles. After a slow start when the Dulles are first introduced as children, the tale picks up during the 1930s, showing the siblings as prominent New Yorkers involved in legal work and social causes. (Later still, the brothers were enormously influential figures on the world stage; John Foster Dulles as U.S. Secretary of State, and Allen Dulles as the first head of the CIA.) Their sister, Eleanor Dulles, emerges as a particularly strong character in the book. Portrayed as an economist and socialist, sympathetic to Soviet Russia, she throws herself into a passionate love affair with an enigmatic young Jewish secret agent who is working towards the foundation of the state of Israel.

Tempo really picks up in the last third of the novel, when wartime intrigue mixes with greedy international oil dealers, while sinister Nazis of divided loyalties sneak in and out of neutral Switzerland and sundry Europeans scheme for their own ends. These secondary characters form a parade of fleeting walk-on parts, as few of them are portrayed with fleshed-out personalities. Still, The Witness Tree does provide some useful insights to a little-known episode of 20th-century history.